Scorched Earth

17

The rotor throb of an approaching helicopter thundered above the pueblo. The three men of Able Team startled awake in one of the adobe houses.

In thanks for the liberation of the pueblo, the people had provided the North Americans with a room and beds made of dry cornstalks covered with woven mats. Now, the soft blue light of morning came through the branches roofing the house.

Cornstalks crackled as Gadgets sat up and reached for his CAR. Lyons opened his eyes, but did not lift his head from the pack he used as a pillow. Staring up at the hundreds of points of predawn blue shining through the thatched ceiling, their eyes followed the noise of the helicopter from the west to east. As the ear-shattering noise of the rotors faded, Gadgets turned to his partners.

"The army? "he asked.

Lyons yawned and shook his head. "There's no alarm," Blancanales answered. "The people would come to alert us."

"Must be Davis," Lyons said. "Unless one of the army pilots escaped. Time to get organized."

Standing, Lyons slapped dust and bits of cornstalk from his sweat-stiffened, filthy fatigues. Powdery earth from the ridge had shaded his fatigues a two-tone — the back of his shirt and pants faded black, the fronts, especially his knees and elbows, dirt brown. He unscrewed the cap of his canteen, poured water into one of his cupped hands, and washed his face.

"I don't think any of those goons are going to escape," Gadgets told his partners as they assembled their equipment and weapons. "Pol, you see what happened to that rapist shit, the one the Yaquis caught in the act?"

Blancanales didn't reply. Lyons laughed, the sound sharp and cynical. "Didn't live through it, did he?"

"You had to see it to believe it." Gadgets shook his head, as if attempting to clear his mind of the images. "I have seen some bad shit, but it's always been what's already happened, after the fact. But this, man oh man, right there in front of me, in living color..."

"What? They castrate him?" Lyons didn't pause as he broke down his silenced Colt and checked the mechanism. "Makes sense to me."

"More than just that. They took his skin off like a shirt. They unzipped him with their knives. His shirt and pants and... his skin... they just stripped it off him. If it hadn't been so horrible, it would've been flat out amazing."

Through the small window they heard crying and voices. Blancanales pushed aside a burlap curtain and looked outside. He watched for a moment, then spoke to his partners. "The people are preparing their dead. And it looks like everyone's leaving. They're all packed."

"Any minute the army could show up with napalm. You packed?" Lyons asked. "We're going, too."

"Where?" Gadgets asked.

"Wherever the goon squad came from," Lyons told him. "Now we've got transportation."

Shouldering their packs, they left the adobe house and walked into a crowd of townspeople gathering on the road. Men and women carrying bundles of possessions on their backs trudged north, followed by lines of children. Older children pulled goats along by ropes. Other children carried baskets of chickens. A few families shouldered heavier burdens: cloth-wrapped dead.

Townspeople gathered around the three North Americans, thanking them for their help. Blancanales acknowledged in Spanish; Gadgets and Lyons nodded. Children stared at the strangers. Finally, Able Team marched away to find the fighters.

Walking to the ridge trail, they saw that only furniture remained in the houses of the pueblo. The walls had been stripped of photos, shelves and tables were bare of utensils, the windows denuded of curtains. Before the sun rose over the eastern hill, the pueblo would be deserted.

"Think these people are opium farmers?" Lyons asked his partners.

"If they are, it doesn't look like they got rich," Gadgets said.

Blancanales indicated the pueblo with a sweep of his arm, taking in the mud-plastered adobe houses, the pole and tree-branch ramadas, the people with ragged clothes and bundles of possessions.

"Do you begin to understand why they would grow opium?" he asked Lyons. "Someone comes out here and promises them a few dollars. It's the difference between food or no food, shoes or no shoes..."

"But what they got was a gang war..." Lyons replied as he looked up. Vultures circled the village.

"Opium and death," Lyons said. "Heroin and gang wars. Billions of dope dollars and international fascism. Hell, it's time to move. We've got questions to put to those prisoners."

Bent under the unwelcome weight of their packs and weapons, they climbed up the steep trail to the ridge. Only two of the Huey troopships remained. Soldiers worked inside the helicopters. On the north end of the ridge, where Lyons and Vato had hidden and plotted the infiltration, soldiers dug ditches.

Vato, standing in the center of the ridgetop plateau, directed the soldiers. The old achaistood beside him. As Able Team approached the helicopters, the North Americans recognized Yaquis in the green camouflage fatigues. The Yaquis wore the fatigues, berets and boots of the Mexican army. They all wore army web gear. With the M-16 and FN-FAL rifles they had captured from the Mexicans, they looked like soldiers.

"What's going on?" Gadgets wondered out loud.

They saw that nothing remained of the killing the night before. No blood or flesh marked the spots where Mexican soldiers had died. Yaquis swept the earth clean with branches.

In one of the troopships, Miguel Coral worked with Yaquis to secure a chain of three claymore mines to the engine housing of a troopship. Taped together in a band, linked by a line of det-cord, the claymores faced them.

"I wouldn't stand in front of amateurs playing with claymores," Gadgets advised from a distance.

Lyons and Blancanales stepped back ten paces.

"What are they doing?" Blancanales asked.

"Vato!" Lyons called out.

The achaiand the young leader walked to them. Of all the Yaquis, only they wore dust-colored clothing. Vato had his Springfield rifle slung over his back.

"What's happening over there?" Gadgets pointed to the troopship where Coral had set up the claymore mines.

"The army is coming. With their officers. When they come, we kill them."

"How do you know?" Lyons demanded.

"This will be known as the Hill of Death," the achaiadded. With a salute to the foreigners, the old man walked away. "The boy will instruct you en su trabajo aqui."

"In the other helicopter, the one that Davis took away, there is a special radio..."

"Where's he now?" Lyons continued.

"My men hide the helicopter. He will wait with it."

"What kind of special radio?" Gadgets asked. He shrugged off his pack and set it on the earth.

Blancanales stopped the interruptions. "Gentlemen! The man's trying to brief us."

Vato continued. "I told the Mexican lieutenant to report that he had trapped the Yaquis and North Americans, but he needed more soldiers and weapons. The Mexican colonel immediately took command. I know the vanity of my enemy. He flies here now to lead the final assault. And we will kill them.

"There..." Vato pointed to the first helicopter "...we have the bombs in place. Claymore mines. In front of the bombs are barrels of gasoline from the helicopters. Senor Coral told me the arrangement would be very terrible..."

"Oh, yeah..." Gadgets agreed. "If the blast and shrapnel don't get them, the flash will toast them righteously."

"And now Senor Coral prepares the second bomb. When the helicopters land, my soldiers will go down the trail, then explode the bombs."

"But what a waste of helicopters," Gadgets interrupted again. "Those Hueys cost a million each."

"There is only one pilot," Vato countered. "The men there..." he pointed to the soldiers digging ditches on the hill overlooking the plateau "...they have the machine guns from the helicopters. They will fire down. And there on that mountain..."

Across the canyon, three hundred fifty meters away, Yaquis wearing their dust-colored uniforms dug more ditches. "From there, we will shoot with rifles and machine guns. When they come, they die."

Blancanales nodded. "A classic 'X' ambush."

"We will need one of you here," Vato continued. He looked to Blancanales. "You, you speak Castilian. You will be here with your radio. And you..." he looked to Lyons "...you will be with me on the other mountain."

"How will you trigger the claymores?" Gadgets asked. "Maybe I can work out something slick. And that other helicopter's got radios. I can monitor the frequencies."

Vato pointed to the helicopter. "I know nothing of that. Talk to Senor Coral. When he is done, he will take you to where the other helicopter is hidden."

"What happened to our prisoners?" Lyons demanded.

"The officers?" Vato asked. "Nothing."

"And the other soldiers?" Blancanales asked.

Not taking his eyes from Lyons, Vato ignored the question, as if Blancanales had not spoken. "Come. I go now to the other hill to wait. I will take you to the officers. You can question them. But we must hurry. We talk too much and the Mexicans come."

"We want in on this?" Lyons asked his partners.

Gadgets nodded. "The man's got it down. No doubt about it."

"If the Mexicans come down here," Blancanales added. The ex-Green Beret surveyed the landscape, the ridge, the canyon, the near-vertical mountainsides, the expanse of desert and hills and gullies continuing into the distance.

Only the plateau where they stood offered the advantages of high, defensible ground and open area for the landing and takeoffs of helicopters. To the north, where the Yaqui machine gunners concealed their firing positions, rocks and sheer drop-offs made landing impossible. To the east, where Vato would place his riflemen and backup machine gun, a hilltop offered only a few square meters of level area. With the uniformed soldiers and the decoy troopships, the plateau looked like a secured landing zone. Blancanales finally nodded his approval.

"And I think they will," he said.

"This means we can't raid the army base," Lyons told his partners. "If they lose the colonel, they'll be on full alert."

"Ironman, get smart. We've got a helicopter. Are they going to expect us to come out of the sky in one of their own troopships? You're just making noise because this ain't your idea."

"I want to get the number-one Nazi, the Mexican traitor who's working for the goons."

Gadgets laughed. "Well, hey, maybe he's coming to you!"

"All right..." Lyons looked across to the other hilltop. "I'll be over there."

And he jogged after Vato.

"Notice Vato didn't answer your question about the soldiers?" Gadgets asked Blancanales.

"Had to ask. I know the answer."

"Yeah. Me, too. Zipppp. Zipppp."

On the trail, Lyons saw the last of the families leaving the pueblo. The houses stood empty. Nothing moved on the dirt road but swirls of dust.

Vato waited for him in the streambed. Lyons splashed through the shallows, his overweight backpack lurching from side to side.

"Where are they?" he asked.

In response, Vato led him up the embankment to a shack made of interwoven branches and plastered with mud. A Yaqui fighter guarding the door nodded to Vato and Lyons.

"We did nothing to them. But I think they will speak."

Lyons looked at the sleeves of the guard's dust-colored shirt. Clotted blood crusted the cloth as high as his elbows. Blood had splattered his shirt and pants. Then Lyons pushed aside the woven-stick door.

Plastic loops still secured the prisoners' wrists and ankles. Tape covered their mouths. But the tape over their eyes had been replaced with blood-clotted strips of green camouflage cloth. The shack stank of the blood.

And shit. The officers had emptied their bowels and bladders into their tailored fatigues.

As Lyons pushed aside the door, the Fascist and the Mexican traitor convulsed, arching their bodies, kicking with their legs in an attempt to push themselves backward through the wall. Animal groans came from their throats. Stepping back, Lyons spoke to Vato in a whisper, "What did you do? Tell me..."

"We put all of the Mexicans in a line. We put these two at the end. To be last. And as all the others went to the gods, they watched. When there was only the two, we went to them and said they were the prisoners of the North Americans. If the North Americans wanted them to live, they would live. And if not, then they would be offered, like all the other soldiers."

Lyons laughed. Vato spoke to the Yaqui guard and they laughed also. In the shack, the prisoners thrashed and groaned, beating their bodies against the mud-plastered sticks.

"Very effective," Lyons told the Yaquis, then he went to the prisoners. To play on their fears, he slipped out his double-edged boot knife. He squatted in front of the gray-uniformed Nazi and tore off the man's blindfold.

The man shook with fear. Blinking against the light, his eyes rolling in their sockets, the blond European-featured Fascist cringed. Lyons grabbed the Fascist's hair and immobilized his head. With the tip of the knife, he cut the tape over the prisoner's mouth.

"Who are you?" Lyons demanded. "Where do you come from? Who is your commander?"

The Fascist stared at Lyons. His voice trembled with panic. "You're a white man... why are you with them? These animals... why do you betray your country? Your race?"

Lyons repeated. "Who are you? Where do you come from? Who is your commander? Answer or die."

The prisoner summoned up his arrogance. "I am an officer of the International. All the power of the International stands behind me. Free me, and as a white man, you can expect mercy... and a position in the New Reich."

Lyons watched and listened as the Fascist spoke.

"You cannot hope to withstand the onslaught of the Reich. The elite of the hemisphere stand united. Even your government, your leaders stand with us, united!"

The knife blade pressed against his mouth stopped his words. "Just answer the questions, filth." Lyons's anger raged through his words.

"I am Captain Graefe of the International, advisor to the International Group of the army of the Republic of Mexico," the Fascist proudly trumpeted.

"Americano!" the Yaqui guard called to Lyons.

"Que?" Lyonsrushed outside.

The Yaqui pointed to a mirror flashing with the dawn light from the eastern hilltop. Lyons saw Vato already running for his position across the canyon.

"Ellos vienen. Vayase! El Brujo lo necesita."

Lyons dashed back into the shack. He replaced the blindfold on the Fascist. As Lyons unrolled fresh tape to blind and gag Graefe, the Fascist said to him, "Now is your chance to save yourself! You face overwhelming force. Nothing can withstand the armies of the New Reich. Take this chance to..."

Tape stopped his words. Lyons looped the tape over the prisoner's mouth, then put a wrap around the man's head to hold the blindfold in place.

"I'll be back," was all he said, a cold fury in his voice.

Lyons ran.